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How English Works A Linguistic Introduction

How English Works : A Linguistic Introduction

How English Works : A Linguistic Introduction

Summary

A major introductory language/linguistics textbook written specifically for English and Education majors, this book is an engaging introduction to the structure of English, general theories in linguistics, and important issues in sociolinguistics. This accessible text provides more extensive coverage of issues of particular interest to English and Education majors. Tapping into our natural curiosity about language, it invites all students to connect academic linguistics to everyday use of the English language and to become active participants in the construction of linguistic knowledge. The second edition provides updated examples of language change-including new slang and other word coinages, grammatical developments, and sound changes-as well as new research findings on American dialects, language acquisition, language evolution, eggcorns, English and the Internet, and much more.

Author Biography

Anne Curzan is Associate Professor of English at the University of Michigan, where she also holds an appointment in the Department of Linguistics and School of Education. In 2007, she received an Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship for outstanding contributions to undergraduate education. She is the author of Gender Shifts in the History of English (Cambridge UP, 2003) and co-author of First Day to Final Grade: A Graduate Student’s Guide to Teaching (U of Michigan P, 2006). She currently serves as co-editor of the Journal of English Linguistics.

Michael Adams teaches English language and literature at Indiana University, Bloomington. For fifteen years, he taught at Albright College, in Reading, Pennsylvania, where he also served as chair of the Department of English and associate academic dean; he has been a visiting professor at Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of Iceland. He is the author of Slayer Slang: ABuffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon (Oxford UP, 2003) and Slang: The People’s Poetry (Oxford UP, 2009), as well as contributing editor to Word Histories and Mysteries: Abracadabra to Zeus (Houghton Mifflin, 2004). He was editor of Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America for several years; currently, he is editor of the quarterly journal American Speech.

Table of Contents

Brief Contents

Inside Front Cover Dialect Map of American English, Consonant Phonemes of American English, Vowel Phonemes of American English

Inside Back Cover Brief Timeline for the History of the English Language

Detailed Contents

List of Symbols, Linguistic Conventions, and Common Abbreviations

What’s New to This Edition

Preface to Instructors

Letter to Students

Chapter 1 A Language like English

Chapter 2 Language and Authority

Chapter 3 English Phonology

Chapter 4 English Morphology

Chapter 5 English Syntax: The Grammar of Words

Chapter 6 English Syntax: Phrases, Clauses, and Sentences

Chapter 7 Semantics

Chapter 8 Spoken Discourse

Chapter 9 Stylistics

Chapter 10 Language Acquisition

Chapter 11 Language Variation

Chapter 12 American Dialects

Chapter 13 History of English: Old to Early Modern English

Chapter14 History of English: Modern and Future English

Glossary

Bibliography

Credits

Index

Detailed Table of Contents

Inside Front Cover Consonant Phonemes of English, Vowel Phonemes of English, Phonetic Alphabet for American English

Inside Back Cover Brief Timeline for the History of the English Language

List of Symbols, Linguistic Conventions, and Common Abbreviations xviii

What’s New to This Edition

Preface to Instructors

Letter to Students

Chapter 1 A Language Like English

The Story of Aks

Language, Language Everywhere

The Power of Language

Name Calling

Judging by Ear

A Question to Discuss: What Makes Us Hear an Accent?

The System of Language

Arbitrariness and Systematicity

A Scholar to Know: Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913)

Creativity

Grammar

Linguistics

Human Language versus Animal Communication

Birds and Bees

Chimps and Bonobos

Distinctive Characteristics of Human Language

The Process of Language Change

Language Genealogies

A Question to Discuss: Can Your Language Peeves Be Rethought?

Mechanics of Language Change

Progress or Decay?

Special Focus: Attitudes about Language Change

Summary

Suggested Reading

Exercises

Chapter 2 Language and Authority

Who Is in Control?

Language Academies

Language Mavens

A Question to Discuss: Does the SAT Know Good Grammar from Bad?

Defining Standard English

Descriptive versus Prescriptive Grammar Rules

Case Study One: Multiple Negatives

Case Study Two: Ain’t

Case Study Three: Who and Whom

The Status of Prescriptive Rules

Spoken versus Written Language

A Question to Discuss: Are We Losing Our Memories?

Dictionaries of English

The Earliest Dictionaries of English

The Beginnings of Modern Lexicography

Historical Lexicography

American Lexicography

A Question to Discuss: Should Dictionaries Ever Prescribe?

English Grammar, Usage, and Style

The Earliest Usage Books

Prescriptive versus Descriptive Tendencies in Grammars of English

Modern Approaches to English Usage

Special Focus: Corpus Linguistics

Brief History of Corpus Linguistics

Applications of Corpus Linguistics in the Twenty-first Century

Summary

Suggested Reading

Exercises

Chapter 3 English Phonology

Phonetics and Phonology

The Anatomy of Speech

The International Phonetic Alphabet

English Consonants

Stops

Fricatives

Language Change at Work: Is /h/ Disappearing from English?

Affricates

A Question to Discuss: Does English Have Initial or Final /Z/?

Nasals

Liquids and Glides

Syllabic Consonants

English Vowels

Front Vowels

Back Vowels

Central Vowels

Diphthongs

Language Change at Work: The cot/caught and pin/pen Mergers

Natural Classes

Phonemes and Allophones

Sample Allophones

Minimal Pairs

Phonological Rules

Assimilation

Deletion

Insertion

Metathesis

Language Change at Work: Is larynx Undergoing Metathesis?

Syllables and Phonotactic Constraints

Perception of Sound

Special Focus: History of English Spelling

Should English Spelling Be Reformed?

Summary

Suggested Reading

Exercises

Chapter 4 English Morphology

Morphology

Open and Closed Classes of Morphemes

A Question to Discuss: Exceptions to the Closedness of Closed Classes?

Bound and Free Morphemes

Inflectional and Derivational Bound Morphemes

Inflectional Morphemes

Derivational Morphemes

Language Change at Work: The Origins of Inflectional -s

Affixes and Combining Forms

Morphology Trees

A Question to Discuss: What about Complex Words That Seem to Have Only One Morpheme?

Ways of Forming English Words

Combining

Language Change at Work: Where do Contractions Fit In?

Shortening

A Question to Discuss: Is It Clipping or Backformation?

Language Change at Work: Alice in Wonderland and the Portmanteau

Blending

Shifting

Language Change at Work: Success Rates for New Words

Reanalysis, Eggcorns, and Folk Etymology

Reduplication

Frequency of Different Word-Formation Processes

Borrowing and the Multicultural Vocabulary of English

A Question to Discuss: What’s Wrong with amorality?

Special Focus: Slang and Creativity

Summary

Suggested Reading

Exercises

Chapter 5 English Syntax: The Grammar of Words

Syntax and Lexical Categories

Open-Class Lexical Categories

Nouns

Adjectives

Language Change at Work: Is It fish or fishes, oxen or oxes?

A Question to Discuss: Am I Good or Well?

Verbs

A Question to Discuss: Did I Lie Down or Lay Down?

Adverbs

Closed-Class Lexical Categories

Prepositions

Conjunctions

A Question to Discuss: What Is the up in call up?

Pronouns

Language Change at Work: Himself, Hisself, Hisownself

Determiners

Auxiliary Verbs

Challenges to Categorization

The Suffix -ing

Noun Modifiers

Yes and No

A Question to Discuss: What Can Phonology Reveal about Modifying -ing Forms?

Special Focus: Descriptive Syntax and Prescriptive Rules

Hopefully

Split Infinitive

Sentence-Final Prepositions

Its/It’s

Singular Generic They

Summary

Suggested Reading

Exercises

Chapter 6 English Syntax: Phrases, Clauses, and Sentences

Generative Grammar

Universal Grammar

A Scholar to Know: Noam Chomsky (1928– )

Constituents and Hierarchies

Constituent Hierarchies

Clauses and Sentences

Constituency Tests

Phrase Structure Rules

Form and Function

Clause Types

Basic Phrase Structure Trees

Complex Phrase Structure Trees

Adverbial Clauses

Relative Clauses

Language Change at Work: Which Is It, Which or That?

Complementizer Clauses

Reduced Subordinate Clauses

Infinitive Phrases

Gerund and Participial Phrases

Tense and Auxiliaries

A Question to Discuss: What Is the It in “It Is Raining”?

Transformations

Wh- Questions

Negation

Yes-No Questions

Passive Constructions

A Question to Discuss: How Did This Passive Sentence Get Constructed?

Relative Pronoun Deletion

Does Generative Grammar Succeed?

Special Focus: Syntax and Prescriptive Grammar

Sentence Fragments and Run-on Sentences

Colons, Semicolons, and Comma Splices

Dangling Participles

Summary

Suggested Reading

Exercises

Chapter 7 Semantics

Semantics

The Limits of Reference

The Role of Cognition

The Role of Linguistic Context

A Question to Discuss: How Do Function Words Mean?

The Role of Physical and Cultural Context

Language Change at Work: The Formation of Idioms

A Brief History of Theories of Reference

Deixis

Plato and Forms

Repairing Plato

From Reference to Discourse

From Reference to Translation

Lexical Fields

Hyponym to Homonym (and Other Nyms)

Hyponymy

Meronymy

Synonymy

Antonymy

Homonymy

A Question to Discuss: Does the Thesaurus Have a Bad Name?

Organization of the Mental Lexicon

Prototype Semantics

Lexical Prototype Semantics

Analogical Mapping

Conceptual Metaphor

The Intersection of Semantics, Syntax, and Discourse

Projection Rules

How Sentences Mean

Sentences and Context

Processes of Semantic Change

Generalization and Specialization

Metaphorical Extension

Euphemism and Dysphemism

Pejoration and Amelioration

Linguistic Relativity

Special Focus: Politically Correct Language

Summary

Suggested Reading

Exercises

Chapter 8 Spoken Discourse

Defining Discourse Analysis

Speech Act Theory: Accomplishing Things with Words

Scholars to Know: J. L. Austin (1911–1960) and John Searle (1932– )

Components of Speech Acts

Direct and Indirect Speech Acts

Performative Speech Acts

Evaluating Speech Act Theory

The Cooperative Principle: Successfully Exchanging Information

Conversational Maxims

A Scholar to Know: Robin Tolmach Lakoff (1942-)

Conversational Implicature

A Question to Discuss: Entailment and Implicature

Relevance

Politeness and Face: Negotiating Relationships in Speaking

Positive and Negative Politeness and Face

Face-Threatening Acts

A Question: A Question to Discuss: How Do Compliments Work?

Discourse Markers: Signaling Discourse Organization and Authority

Function of Discourse Markers

Language Change at Work: Discourse Markers rom Beowulf to Dude

Types of Discourse Markers

Language Change at Work: Like, I Was Like, What Is Going On with the Word Like?